5.  The applicants, Mr Valeriu Roşca (V.R.) and Mr Nicolae Roşca (N.R.), are Moldovan nationals who were born in 1960 and 1978 respectively and live in Cotiujenii-Mari.
6.  The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.
7.  On 1 August 2000 I.C. complained to the Ialoveni police that he had been abducted and robbed by unidentified assailants.
8.  On 11 May 2001 both applicants were arrested by officers from the Centru District Police Station in Chişinău. According to the applicants, no reasons were given for their arrest, during which they both were beaten by the arresting officers.
9.  The applicants claim that at the police station they again received blows and kicks over a period of several hours. They were later taken to the General Police Directorate in Chişinău, where they were pressured to confess to crimes they had not committed. Following their refusal, they were each beaten, then handcuffed on the floor, where they received truncheon blows to the soles of their feet and electric shocks.
10.  As a result of the ill-treatment, N.R. wrote a self-incriminatory statement, but did not sign it, as a form of protest. The applicants were subsequently moved back to the Centru District Police Station, where the investigator offered them documents to sign under threat of further ill-treatment.
11.  On 13 June 2001 the applicants were taken to Ialoveni Police Station. As was later explained by the Ialoveni police officers, this was necessary in order to verify the applicants' possible involvement in the crime against I.C. described above. On the same day the CPT delegation visited the police station. N.R. informed the CPT about ill-treatment at the Centru District Police Station and the General Police Directorate.
12.  The applicants state that after the departure of the CPT delegation, they were taken to an office and ill-treated for hours on end, with truncheon blows to the soles of their feet and to their heads, in order to make them confess to crimes they had not committed.
13.  On 14 June 2001 the CPT delegation returned to Ialoveni Police Station and saw N.R., who had complained of ill-treatment the day before.
14.  On 15 June 2001 three officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs visited N.R., who repeated his complaints of ill-treatment at the Centru District Police Station, the General Police Directorate, and Ialoveni Police Station. Both applicants were then taken to the Centru District Police Station and later to the General Police Directorate.
15.  The applicants claim that as a result of their ill-treatment they partly lost their hearing and have frequent headaches and pain.
16.  The applicants complained of ill-treatment in all three establishments in which they had been detained, but the prosecution refused to initiate criminal investigations in respect of all but one of the complaints, that relating to ill-treatment at Ialoveni Police Station. None of the police officers was suspended and some allegedly put pressure on the applicants and their families to withdraw their complaints.
17.  On 15 June 2001 a police inspector, Colonel P.D., submitted a report to the Minister of Internal Affairs, describing the visit of the CPT to Ialoveni Police Station and the findings made on 14 June 2001, namely that the conditions of detention and medical care there were inadequate and that a person detained there, identified as Mr Roşca, had been found to have suffered serious bodily harm. P.D. proposed that the person concerned be transferred as a matter of urgency to a secure location and offered access to a lawyer and that a report be drawn up in compliance with the recommendations.
18.  On 18 June 2001 the applicants were taken, in the absence of their lawyers, to a doctor to determine the degree of damage to their health. The doctor found injuries to various parts of their bodies, including haematomas ranging from 6 cm x 2 cm to 12 cm x 3 cm, which were characterised by the doctor as “slight injuries”.
19.  Also on 18 June 2001 P.D. reported to the Minister of Internal Affairs on “the results of examining information regarding the torture of detainees at [Ialoveni Police Station]”. The report stated that the applicants had complained to the CPT of ill-treatment by officers from Ialoveni Police Station. The preliminary investigation established the names of three police officers who had dealt with the applicants' case there and those of another six officers involved in the case at the Centru District Police Station in Chişinău. On questioning, all the officers had denied ill-treating the applicants. Since medical reports showed slight injuries to both applicants and since the inconsistencies between the various pieces of evidence could only be explained after a full investigation, P.D. recommended the initiation of criminal proceedings against all nine police officers and investigators involved.
20.  On 20 June 2001 the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs asked the Prosecutor General's Office to initiate a criminal investigation into the case.
21.  In a report to the Minister of Internal Affairs on an unknown date, the commanding officer at Ialoveni Police Station denied any ill-treatment of the applicants. He mentioned that they had made no request for access to a lawyer.
22.  On 20 July 2001 the Prosecutor General's Office initiated a criminal investigation into the applicants' alleged ill-treatment. On the same day another investigation was initiated into the alleged negligence of the commanding officer at Ialoveni Police Station. The cases were later joined. On 23 October 2001 the investigation into the applicants' ill-treatment on 11 May 2001 in the Centru District Police Station was discontinued for lack of evidence. In response to the applicants' complaint, on 24 March 2002 the Prosecutor General's Office reiterated the decision of 23 October 2001. It appears that the applicants did not challenge either decision in court.
23.  On 20 August 2001 a further medical report was issued after a fresh examination of N.R. The expert was asked whether the injuries which N.R. had sustained could have been caused by falling, or hitting objects in the cell. The report did not exclude this as an alternative explanation for the injuries.
24.  On 2 November 2001 the prosecution submitted the case against the police officers from Ialoveni police station for examination by the trial court.
25.  A certificate issued on 3 December 2002 by the governor of Prison no. 13 in Chişinău, where V.R. was detained, confirmed that V.R. was being treated for the consequences of brain damage and asthenic-depressive syndrome and mentioned an injury he had allegedly received to his head in 1999.
26.  On 23 June 2003 the Centru District Court acquitted three officers accused of abuse of power for unlawfully beating the applicants. The court noted the CPT report, which stated that the delegates had examined the applicants and “found certain bodily injuries”. However, it found that it could not rely on the CPT report because, under procedural rules, only medical reports by specialist doctors could serve as a basis for a criminal conviction. Since the CPT report had not been made during the criminal investigation but was annexed to the file by the victims, it could not be relied on. The same could be said of the reports by P.D. (see above). The court did not comment on the medical reports dated 18 June 2001.
27.  Two of the officers were convicted of negligence for failing properly to register I.C.'s complaint in 2000 and attempting to solve the alleged offence beyond the ambit of a proper criminal investigation. The applicants' claims for compensation for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage sustained as a result of ill-treatment were rejected as unfounded.
28.  In his appeal of 18 July 2003 N.R. complained, inter alia, of the court's failure to convict the officers of torture. He also pointed out that both he and V.R. had identified the police officers at an identity parade as the persons who had tortured them and that none of the officers could explain the origin of the injuries they had sustained while in detention. He referred to the statements of several fellow detainees in Ialoveni Police Station who confirmed that they had seen V.R. being taken in good health out of the cell only to return later with clear signs of ill-treatment. These witnesses denied seeing anybody in the cell hurt themselves. N.R. referred to the absence, in the criminal file against both applicants, of any reference to the applicants' participation in procedural steps at Ialoveni Police Station. This confirmed, in his view, that they had not been taken to that station for any lawful purpose. He finally referred to the civil action lodged by him and V.R. within the criminal proceedings. He questioned the application of the amnesty law to accused persons who had not compensated the victims of their crime, a state of affairs which he submitted was contrary to the law. V.R. lodged a similar appeal. In the prosecutor's appeal it was mentioned that each applicant had been offered photographs of the entire staff of Ialoveni Police Station for identification purposes and both had identified the police officers who had ill-treated them.
29.  On 15 January 2004 the Chişinău Court of Appeal partly quashed the judgment given at first instance. It acquitted the two officers who had been convicted of negligence by the lower court, finding that it had not been their duty to register I.C.'s complaint. The court upheld the remainder of the lower court's judgment, finding in particular that it had been right to reject the applicants' complaint of ill-treatment. It considered that the statements made by the applicants were untrue because the description of their injuries in the medical reports did not coincide with their own description of the manner in which they had sustained the injuries and because “they could use their statements as a means of defence in the criminal proceedings in which they were accused of serious crimes”. Moreover, the CPT report and other related documents did not prove that the applicants had been ill-treated specifically by the officers accused in the case and thus could not be used as a basis for a conviction.
30.  The applicants' lawyer lodged an appeal on points of law, relying on the various documents in the file and seeking the conviction of the accused for exceeding their authority through ill-treatment.
31.  On 29 June 2004 the Supreme Court of Justice rejected the applicants' appeal on points of law, but allowed an appeal by the prosecutor, in which the latter sought the conviction of the two accused. It ordered the rehearing of the case by the Chişinău Court of Appeal.
32.  On 26 January 2005 the Chişinău Court of Appeal quashed the district court's judgment in so far as it had acquitted the three officers of ill-treatment. It adopted a new judgment convicting all three officers of manifest abuse of authority (Article 185 (2) of the Criminal Code – see “Relevant domestic law” below). Each officer was sentenced to three years' imprisonment and disqualification from working in a law-enforcement agency for two years. The court also decided to suspend the enforcement of the judgment, with one year's probation, finding that the officers were relatively young, had families, had not been previously convicted and were viewed positively in society.
33.  On 27 April 2005 the Supreme Court of Justice upheld that judgment. It found that the material in the file, including the CPT report, the witness statements and the medical reports proved beyond doubt that the three officers had ill-treated the applicants.
34.  The applicants submitted copies of newspaper interviews with members of the Moldovan branch of Amnesty International and the President of the Moldovan Bar Association asserting that ill-treatment was routinely used in certain law-enforcement agencies, especially the police and investigators, in order to obtain self-incriminating statements and the conviction of innocent persons.
35.  In a letter to the Court dated 15 September 2003, the applicants submitted that they had been detained in inhuman and degrading conditions both in the General Police Department situated at no. 6 Tighina St. and, from 28 June 2001, in Prison no. 3 in Chişinău (also known as Prison no. 13). In respect of the latter place of detention, they referred, in particular, to severe overcrowding (twenty prisoners in a 25 sq. m cell and up to ten prisoners detained for hours in closed 1‑2 sq. m. boxes in courthouses while awaiting court hearings, without food, water or access to a toilet); thick cigarette smoke and strong odours from the open-plan toilet, coupled with a lack of ventilation; a lack of fresh water during most of the day; very limited access to daylight owing to the thick netting on the window; damp; inedible food; and inadequate medical assistance.
36.  The applicants also alleged that their correspondence had been censored and their contact with the outside world severely limited while they were in the detention centre at no. 6 Tighina St. in Chişinău.